We are very happy to announce that we have started a collaboration with JetBrains to bring Kotlin to BlueJ.

Kotlin is a modern general purpose programming language developed and maintained by JetBrains, running on the JVM and fully interoperable with Java.

We (the BlueJ Group at King’s College London and JetBrains) have started a collaboration to implement support for Kotlin in BlueJ, with both organisations contributing developer time to the project. We expect beta versions to become available for testing in the Spring, and full support being released later this year.

Making Kotlin available in BlueJ, in addition to Java and Stride, brings a third popular language to our environment, giving more choice to teachers and learners.

BlueJ 5.4.1 has been released, to fix a problem with error messages sometimes not showing in the Java editor. It is available from our front page as usual.

There are also a few other fixes as described here, including BlueJ not removing old versions on Windows when installed per-machine (for all users).

BlueJ 5.4.0 is now available for download. Support for Java 21, Apple Silicon, Raspberry Pi and more.

You can read more details in this forum post.

A new edition of the BlueJ book is on the way.

David and I have just finished the draft manuscript for the seventh edition of “Objects First”, and sent it to the publishers.

The book will now go through the usual process (editing, layout, proofreading, etc.), but it should come out later this year.

The new edition includes four brand-new chapters, including recursion, teamwork, records, a brief history of Java, and more.

We will let you know if we have firmer dates for publication.

BlueJ 5.3.0 has now been released and is available on the main page.

This release has many minor fixes and optimisations. The full list is available in the version history.

BlueJ 5.2.1 has been released and is available for download on the main page.

This is a relatively minor release, with fixes for Linux and generic installers, plus fixes for JavaFX in non-English locales.

BlueJ 5.2.0 has now been released, you can download it from the main page.

More details about the release are available for members in this discussion thread.

BlueJ 5.1.0a is now available at bluej.org. This release fixes the crash on load on macOS 13 (Ventura)

Users of other operating systems are unaffected and can continue using 5.1.0 as before.

BlueJ development has now moved to Github.

BlueJ has been open source for a long time, and using Git internally, but until now our repository has been private. Today that changes: BlueJ lives on Github and all future development will take place directly on Github. You can read more about this in this discussion post.

BlueJ 5.1.0 is now available for download.

This release switches to Java 17 and adds support for all the language features in Java 17. More information is available in this discussion post.

BlueJ 5.0.3 has now been released and is available for download.

More details on the release are available in a discussion post.

Version 5.0.2a is an update for Mac only, to fix crashes that occur on MacOS 12 (Monterey).

All users on other operating systems should continue to use 5.0.2 as before, but Mac users are advised to update to 5.0.2a, especially if on MacOS Monterey.

BlueJ 5.0.2 has now been released, containing fixes for a crash on launch, an issue with JavaFX user programs, and several editor bugs.

Full details are in this post.

BlueJ 5.0.1 has now been released, containing many bug fixes and a few new features, such as automatically closing curly brackets, and allowing editing of text files.

Full details are in this post.

BlueJ 5.0.0 has now been released, featuring an improved Java editor, JUnit 5 support and more. It is available to download now.

More details are available in this announcement post.